| Viewing Single Post From: The Emblem Kingdom: A Fusion Fic | |
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| +Hollie | Jan 29 2009, 09:20 PM |
Resident Brit
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Three things: 1- don't expect to be anything like your character. 2- it's all Rin's fault 3- I don't promise to finish this. ~~~~~ Chapter 1 PZ felt like he had been running for hours, but he couldn’t be more than a few minutes away from the palace. His breath came in ragged gasps and already his sides hurt. He wasn’t built for this. No. You have to run. Run! His footsteps seemed louder than a gunshot in the stillness of the woods. He wasn’t welcome here. He could feel it in the trees, their foreboding presence hanging over him like a heavy blanket . . . Stop it. Run. They’d be behind him soon. And they would be faster. They’d have dogs, skilled trackers. They’d hunt him down. Member of the Family or not, he would be slaughtered for this secret. The Earth wouldn’t let it get out. His father . . . it wasn’t too much of a stretch of the imagination to see his father holding the axe. The bastard. He wouldn’t think twice to kill his own son “for the good of the family”. PZ whispered as he ran, trying to get the Earth to listen to him. It didn’t always. But surely it must see that this time it was important! Not just for him - this was for the Kingdom. To set things right. To undo the wrongs his family had done all those years ago. The wrongs they were still committing today. Branches no longer flung themselves in his face. Roots moved from his path. Yes! It’s listening! The Earth disguised the sound of his feet, the vibrations that any skilled member of the Earth family would have heard from miles away. And he was hardly miles from the palace yet. Keep running. Distantly, he heard a loud siren. The alarm. Someone had discovered his escape. No! Too soon! No. Don’t think. Run. The Earth was guiding him now, helping him to get away. It helped him to a shallow stream. The water was freezing but it was enough to stop the marks he was leaving on the forest floor. Enough to stop them finding him. He hoped. He needed time to get to the nearest town. PZ knew that he wouldn’t be safe in this district for more than a few days, if that. What he really needed was to find a way into another district . . . not that they would stop pursuing him there. But that at least would give him some cover. Maybe allies, if anybody trusted him enough to help. He was an Earth, after all. One of them. Tyrants. Bullies. Sadists. What a caring family. If they believed what he said, then anybody with a shred of rebellion in them would help. The trouble would be in getting somebody to believe him. To not take one look at his palace clothes and start in the other direction . . . that would need to change, fast. PZ was wearing the plainest clothes he had - he wasn’t stupid - but even so, he would stand out a mile. He needed to blend in. Once he was one amongst many, he would be much harder to find. He hoped. * It was market day in the Earth district. Reaver had never seen the city this busy before. It made him even more nervous. People stared at him as he walked past, almost as though they could tell he wasn’t one of them. Reaver shuddered. He longed to be back in the Fire district, where the stares did not exist. He didn’t like coming here at the best of times, but he needed the extra money it paid. Not many were willing to follow the boss into another district, much less the Earth one. He could see why and vowed that, when he did have the money, he’d never set foot outside the Fire district again. “You thinking again, Reaver?” his boss asked, sounding amused. Reaver scowled but did not reply. Wirt wasn’t a bad guy but he didn’t approve of thinking. Nothing so traitorous as becoming a Reader, anyway. A Reader. Reaver had longed to be one for as long as he had been able to read and write, which was most of his life. It meant working for the Earth family, but that didn’t matter. The library was what mattered. There was no other like it in the whole Kingdom. It was larger than any other collection of books, anywhere. So large that in the hundred years since the Earth family had taken control, they hadn’t managed to get through it all - they burned the books they disapproved of. If the Readers didn’t hide them first. Reaver had been inside a small section of the library once. To this day, it was the biggest room he could remember. And so many books . . . too many to count. Remembering the room now made him dizzy. Tall, domed ceiling. Wooden bookcases three times as tall as he was. Books of all sizes packed neatly into every shelf, alphabetically ordered. The dusty smell of those old pages was still one he fondly recalled. Pity the Reader training was so expensive . . . “Reaver,” Wirt said. He jumped. “Keep your wits about you. Could be trouble.” Wirt was right. A group of Earth soldiers was wandering from stall to stall, talking to the vendors hurriedly in low voices. One of them had spotted Wirt and Reaver, and now he was making his way over. Reaver doubted he was in the market for oranges. “Hey,” the one who had spotted them yelled up, “What’s your business here?” “Trading,” Wirt answered, gesturing to the open crates in the back of the cart. The soldier glared at him suspiciously. “You have a permit?” “Of course.” He handed it over. The solder examined it closely for several seconds. “Fire district, eh,” he commented, “Bah. Don’t know why they let you lot in. You just cause trouble.” “Guess our oranges are worth it,” Wirt replied. Idly, he clicked his fingers and a tiny flame appeared. Oh no. Don’t tell me he’s going to start trouble now. Wirt stared levelly at the soldier. “Are we free to go now?” “No,” the soldier barked back. Reaver winced, sensing the threat in his voice. “I have to ask you a question first.” “Ask away.” “We’re looking for a boy. Seventeen. Brown hair. Tall. From the palace. Name of PZ.” The soldier glared at Wirt. “Traitor. You seen him?” Wirt appeared uninterested. “No.” “I see.” Hesitantly, Wirt’s permit was handed back. “If you do spot him, you had better tell us. Do you know what we do to people who hide traitors?” Reaver froze, convinced that Wirt was about to do something stupid, but for once the man seemed to think better of it. “I don’t care to find out,” he answered flatly. “Smart man,” the soldier replied, smirking. “On your way.” Wirt watched the soldier move away. “Whoever that boy is they’re looking for,” he said to Reaver, “I hope they don’t find him.” Reaver watched the man corner another trader from outside the Earth district and grimaced. “Yeah. Me too.” * That day was not a good day for sales. Wirt refused to give up, though. It was starting to get dark by the time Reaver’s boss finally let him pack everything away. Obviously, it had to rain too. The water came down in sheets. It was like walking through a waterfall. Reaver was soaked to the skin in seconds - not that Wirt was any better off. “Don’t reckon we’d get very far in this,” he muttered gloomily. “We best find some place to stay.” Reaver couldn’t help but give a sarcastic laugh. “What? A place for Fire districters? That’ll be the day.” “Oh, lighten up,” Wirt said. “There’ll be someone desperate enough for money.” “Yeah. So desperate, they’ll charge us a fortune - a fortune we don’t have.” Wirt clicked his fingers, shading the tiny flame from the rain with his free hand. “I’m sure we’ll be able to work something out.” “With the soldiers when they throw us in prison?” Reaver said, flatly. His boss swore. “You’ve got a point. Well, if worst comes to worse we can sleep under the cart.” Reaver knew from experience that the cart didn’t make a water-tight roof. “Great.” It was the thought of that experience that kept Reaver from giving up. Eventually, over an hour later, the two of them did find a shady looking, run-down inn that was willing to accommodate them. At an exorbitant price. “40 marks,” Reaver muttered, as he handed the money over. “That’s outrageous.” “If you don’t like it,” the innkeeper scowled at him, “You can sleep outside.” The pounding of the rain on the roof was an unpleasant reminder of the weather outside. “No thanks.” “Then quit whining! You’re lucky I’m giving you a room in the first place. Bloody Fire districters. Nothing but trouble.” Reaver bit his lip and sighed, but said nothing as the keeper - reluctantly it seemed - handed over his keys. “Second floor. Room 42. 42 looks like--” “I know what the number looks like,” Reaver snapped, heading for the stairs. Wirt went off in the opposite direction - his room was on the ground floor. “See you in the morning, kiddo. Bright and early.” Looks like I’ll have no time for breakfast again. Reaver hadn’t had the best of days so far, but when the key wouldn’t even fit in the lock it was just about the final straw. “Damn it!” “Quiet down!” came the muffled reply from one of the rooms. Reaver ignored the protest, inspecting the lock with a sigh. The keeper didn’t seem the kind of man to admit a mistake easily, especially to a Fire districter, and even less like the kind of man to fix the problem. Well, he wasn’t sleeping under the cart tonight, not after he’d handed over 40 marks of his hard-earned savings. His extra pay wouldn’t even cover for that! Reaver clicked his fingers and blew a tiny flame into the lock. Humming as he coaxed the fire into reshaping the key, he was rewarded when he tried it again a few minutes later and the door opened quietly. His feeling of accomplishment was short-lived. As the door opened, he could see that the room already had an occupant. What the hell. Reaver automatically ran the checklist through his mind. The stranger was tall, with brown hair. At a guess, about seventeen. From the palace - well, he was wearing a poor man’s clothes, but there was no way those were a poor man’s boots. “PZ?” The figure whirled around and Reaver remembered what the soldier had also said. Traitor. Do you know what we do to people who hide traitors? That bloody keeper! Downstairs, the keeper was looking over his books for the day before locking up. His eyes fell on the last entry. Room 42. Shit! The runaway! If the Fire districter reported it . . . he was dead. Even if he wasn’t an Earth, they’d believe him for this if it meant they caught their traitor. Damn it. No, don’t panic. There was still a way out. It would mean going back on a promise but, well, he’d be able to live with that if it saved his skin. If he called the soldiers first, then they’d easily believe that the Fire districter was on the boy’s side. Yeah. That was a good plan. The barracks was the next street over. It would take him minutes. Minutes. Bad luck, kids. |
Known as Haar on Brand of Flame. Bitch.  Formerly Margaret Thatcher, Aleksandr | |
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 8:41 AM Nov 27
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